(Even though “research one” universities such as Purdue University, have mobilized their resources in the service of a New Cold War with China, the Congress is demanding more surveillance of students from China.
From Friday, September 1, 2023
THE NEW COLD WAR AND HIGHER EDUCATION: THE PURDUE CASE
Harry Targ
The conservative
Republican Indiana Senator recently visited Purdue facilities to observe the
university's role in protecting "national security":
The New Cold War With
China
The article linked below
illustrates how the United States is launching a campaign to repress Chinese
Americans and those who warn of a US New Cold War with China. Literature on
Cold War One recounts how government spokespersons, corporate media, and institutions
of popular culture and higher education launched a coordinated “red scare,”
centering on the former Soviet Union. It was not an accident that cold-war
anti-communism paralleled efforts to crush movements advocating more
progressive political agendas. The labor movement was a particular target of
state repression in the 1950s. The signaling of the first Cold War appeared
in a famous telegram George Kennan wrote Washington in 1946 warning of the
establishment of “an iron curtain” descending in Europe.
Today, new cold war
propaganda has been identified by a NATO document as “cognitive warfare,” that
is presenting narratives of the world that demonize China, demean movements for
fundamental global change organizing in the Global South, and advocate increased
militarization of foreign policy and domestic budgets.
To facilitate this New
Cold War think tanks, research institutes, and universities have mobilized
their skills for war while the state targets Chinese Americans and those who
oppose a New Cold War with China:
Higher Education and the
New Cold War
Purdue university in 2021 established what is called the
Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy. Its goal, its website says, is to integrate “technology
expertise, Silicon Valley strategies, and foreign policy tools to build the
Global Trusted Tech Network of governments, companies, organizations and
individuals to accelerate the innovation and adoption of trusted technology and
ensure technology advances freedom.” New Purdue president Mung Chiang
reported that when he returned to the university from the State Department
as the Science and Technology Adviser to the U.S. Secretary of
State, his
vision was based on the view that “technology must advance freedom.” And the
Krach Institute, named after another State Department operative was created to:
“put the Purdue
Equation, “Transformation to the
Power of Trust,” to the test by
embarking on a global campaign to challenge the market dominance of Chinese
tech firms through the Clean Network. The strategy united countries and
companies around a commitment to a set of trust principles in technology
adoption, data privacy, and security practices. In this highly successful
strategy, Krach’s team transformed US diplomacy and created a new model based
on trust called Tech-Statecraft by integrating Silicon Valley strategies with
traditional foreign policy tools.”
And
recently according to the Taipei Times:
Purdue University
is launching a center to advocate for Taiwan as a trusted partner and encourage
US investment in the nation, former US undersecretary of state for economic
growth, energy and the environment Keith Krach told a news conference in Taipei
yesterday
Krach, chairman of the
Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue, first announced plans for the
establishment of the Taiwan Center for Innovation and Prosperity before his
arrival in Taiwan on Wednesday for a four-day visit.\
The center would be a
partnership between public and private sectors in the US and Taiwan to
“advocate for Taiwan internationally and attract more global partners,” the
institute said. Purdue launching center to advocate for Taiwan
Why a New Cold War With
China and Should the US Engage in Cooperation Rather Than Conflict?
Why is United States
foreign policy, both Biden and Trump, returning to a policy hostile to China,
perhaps creating a “New Cold War?” The answer has several parts. First, as
Alfred McCoy has described (In the Shadows of the American Century: The
Rise and Decline of US Global Power, Haymarket Books,
2017), the United States, relatively speaking, is a declining power. As to
economic growth, scientific and technological developments, productivity, and
trade, the US, compared to China particularly, is experiencing stagnation or decline.
China has engaged in massive global projects in transportation, trade, and
scientific advances and by 2030 based on many measures will advance beyond the
US as to Gross Domestic Product.
According to McCoy, the
United States has embarked on a path to overcome its declining relative
economic hegemony by increasingly investing in military advances: a space
force, a new generation of nuclear weapons, cyber security, biometrics, and
maintaining or enhancing a global military presence particularly in the Pacific
(what Obama spokespersons called “the Asian pivot”). In other words, rather
than accommodating to a new multipolar world in the 21st century, the
United States is seeking to reestablish its global hegemony through military
means.
Second, the United
States is desperately seeking to overcome the end of its monopoly on
technological advances. In computerization, transportation, pharmaceuticals, it
is challenging Chinese innovations, claiming that China’s advances are derived
not from its domestic creativity but from “pirating” from United States
companies. For example, the prestigious and influential Council on Foreign
Relations issued a report in 2019 entitled “Innovation and National Security:
Keeping Our Edge.” The report warned that “…the United States risks falling
behind its competitors, principally China.” China is investing significantly in
new technologies, CFR claims, which they predict will make China the biggest
inventor by 2030. Also, to achieve this goal they are “exploiting” the openness
of the US by violating intellectual property rights and spying. Therefore, the
CFR concluded, since technological innovation is linked to economic and
military advantage and since US leadership in technology and science is at
risk, the nation must recommit to rebuilding its scientific prowess.
Third, while the
United States is engaged in efforts at regime change around the world and is
using brutal economic sanctions to starve people into submission (such as in
Venezuela, Cuba, Iran and 36 other countries victimized by economic sanctions),
China is increasing its economic ties to these countries through investments,
trade, and assistance. And China opposes these US policies in international
organizations. In broad terms Chinese policy stands with the majority of
countries in the Global South while the United States seeks to control
developments there.
Fourth, although Biden’s foreign policy as well as his predecessors, is
designed to recreate a Cold War, with China as the target, a policy also
embraced by most Democrats, there is at the same time counter-pressure from
sectors of the capitalist class who have ties to the Chinese economy:
investment, global supply chains, and financial speculation. Moreover, sectors
of Chinese capital own or have substantial control over many US corporations
and banks. In addition, the Chinese government controls over $1 trillion of US
debt. For these sectors of US capital, economic ties with China remain
economically critical. In addition, some writers, such as Jerry Harris, point
to the emergence of a “transnational capitalist class” whose interests are not
tied to any nation-state (Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Democracy,
Clarity Press, 2016).
Consequently, while the
trajectory of US policy is toward a return to cold war, there is some push back
by economic and political elites as well. Although with the emphasis on
domestic investments in technology highlighted in the 2022 National Security document
mentioned by Sanger, it appears the advocates of a New Cold War with China seem
to be in control of US foreign policy. (The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022
reflects this renewed commitment to technological advance in the United
States).
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/12/us/politics/biden-china-russia-national-security.html
Fifth, American domestic politics provide an additional
cause of the transformation of US/China policy. The popularity of the
Democratic Party and President Biden remain low. Therefore, a classic antidote
for politicians experiencing declining popularity is to construct an external
enemy, “an other,” which can redirect the attention of the public from their
personal troubles. It is this external enemy that becomes the source of
domestic problems in political discourse. In this context the President is talking
tough with the “enemy” of the United States, and, as former Secretary of State
Pompeo suggested, it was about time that the US government gave up illusions
about working with China.
Finally, the
ideological package of racism, white supremacy, and American Exceptionalism so
prevalent in United States history resurfaced in dramatic ways in the Trump
years and continues today. White supremacy at home is inextricably connected
with American Exceptionalism abroad. For example, President Theodore Roosevelt
in 1910 claimed that the white race has been critical to
civilization. Years later Madeleine Albright, the Secretary of State
in the Clinton Administration (and more recently President Barack Obama) spoke
about the United States as the “indispensable nation,” a model of economics and
politics for the world. For President Biden, the US stands with “democracy”
against the world’s leading “authoritarians.” This sense of omniscience has
been basic to the ideological justification of United States imperial rule.
Each of these elements,
from the changing shape of economic and military capabilities to political
exigencies, to the pathologies of culture, require a peace and justice movement
that stands for peaceful coexistence, demilitarization, building a world of
economic justice, rights of people to determine their own destiny, and
inalterable opposition to racism, white supremacy, and exceptionalisms of all
kinds.
And for scholars and
diplomats, the question for now is whether it is better to work for a world of
respect, cooperation, recognition of multipolarity and multilateralism, or for
war with China.
